The "urgent call"--the instant, peremptory summons to professional
duty--is an experience that appertains to the medical rather than the
legal practitioner, and I had supposed, when I abandoned the clinical
side of my profession in favour of the forensic, that henceforth I
should know it no more; that the interrupted meal, the broken leisure,
and the jangle of the night-bell, were things of the past; but in
practice it was otherwise. The medical jurist is, so to speak, on the
borderland of the two professions, and exposed to the vicissitudes of
each calling, and so it happened from time to time that the professional
services of my colleague or myself were demanded at a moment's notice.
And thus it was in the case that I am about to relate.
The sacred rite of the "tub" had been duly performed, and the
freshly-dried person of the present narrator was about to be insinuated
into the first instalment of clothing, when a hurried step was heard
upon the stair, and the voice of our laboratory assistant, Polton, arose
at my colleague's door.
"There's a gentleman downstairs, sir, who says he must see you instantly
on most urgent business. He seems to be in a rare twitter, sir--"
Polton was proceeding to descriptive particulars, when a second and
more hurried step became audible, and a strange voice addressed
Thorndyke.
"I have come to beg your immediate assistance, sir; a most dreadful
thing has happened. A horrible murder has been committed. Can you come
with me now?"
"I will be with you almost immediately," said Thorndyke. "Is the victim
quite dead?"
"Quite. Cold and stiff. The police think--"
"Do the police know that you have come for me?" interrupted Thorndyke.
"Yes. Nothing is to be done until you arrive."
"Very well. I will be ready in a few minutes."
"And if you would wait downstairs, sir," Polton added persuasively, "I
could help the doctor to get ready."
With this crafty appeal, he lured the intruder back to the sitting-room,
and shortly after stole softly up the stairs with a small breakfast
tray, the contents of which he deposited firmly in our respective rooms,
with a few timely words on the folly of "undertaking murders on an empty
stomach." Thorndyke and I had meanwhile clothed ourselves with a
celerity known only to medical practitioners and quick-change artists,
and in a few minutes descended the stairs together, calling in at the
laboratory for a few appliances that Thorndyke usually took with him on
a visit of investigation.
As we entered the sitting-room, our visitor, who was feverishly pacing
up and down, seized his hat with a gasp of relief. "You are ready to
come?" he asked. "My carriage is at the door;" and, without waiting for
an answer, he hurried out, and rapidly preceded us down the stairs.
The carriage was a roomy brougham, which fortunately accommodated the
three of us, and as soon as we had entered and shut the door, the
coachman whipped up his horse and drove off at a smart trot.
"I had better give you some account of the circumstances, as we go,"
said our agitated friend. "In the first place, my name is Curtis, Henry
Curtis; here is my card. Ah! and here is another card, which I should
have given you before. My solicitor, Mr. Marchmont, was with me when I
made this dreadful discovery, and he sent me to you. He remained in the
rooms to see that nothing is disturbed until you arrive."
"That was wise of him," said Thorndyke. "But now tell us exactly what
has occurred."
"I will," said Mr. Curtis. "The murdered man was my brother-in-law,
Alfred Hartridge, and I am sorry to say he was--well, he was a bad man.
It grieves me to speak of him thus--_de mortuis_, you know--but, still,
we must deal with the facts, even though they be painful."
"Undoubtedly," agreed Thorndyke.
"I have had a great deal of very unpleasant correspondence with
him--Marchmont will tell you about that--and yesterday I left a note for
him, asking for an interview, to settle the business, naming eight
o'clock this morning as the hour, because I had to leave town before
noon. He replied, in a very singular letter, that he would see me at
that hour, and Mr. Marchmont very kindly consented to accompany me.
Accordingly, we went to his chambers together this morning, arriving
punctually at eight o'clock. We rang the bell several times, and knocked
loudly at the door, but as there was no response, we went down and
spoke to the hall-porter. This man, it seems, had already noticed, from
the courtyard, that the electric lights were full on in Mr. Hartridge's
sitting-room, as they had been all night, according to the statement of
the night-porter; so now, suspecting that something was wrong, he came
up with us, and rang the bell and battered at the door. Then, as there
was still no sign of life within, he inserted his duplicate key and
tried to open the door--unsuccessfully, however, as it proved to be
bolted on the inside. Thereupon the porter fetched a constable, and,
after a consultation, we decided that we were justified in breaking open
the door; the porter produced a crowbar, and by our unified efforts the
door was eventually burst open. We entered, and--my God! Dr. Thorndyke,
what a terrible sight it was that met our eyes! My brother-in-law was
lying dead on the floor of the sitting-room. He had been
stabbed--stabbed to death; and the dagger had not even been withdrawn.
It was still sticking out of his back."
He mopped his face with his handkerchief, and was about to continue his
account of the catastrophe when the carriage entered a quiet side-street
between Westminster and Victoria, and drew up before a block of tall,
new, red-brick buildings. A flurried hall-porter ran out to open the
door, and we alighted opposite the main entrance.
"My brother-in-law's chambers are on the second-floor," said Mr. Curtis.
"We can go up in the lift."
The porter had hurried before us, and already stood with his hand upon
the rope. We entered the lift, and in a few seconds were discharged on
to the second floor, the porter, with furtive curiosity, following us
down the corridor. At the end of the passage was a half-open door,
considerably battered and bruised. Above the door, painted in white
lettering, was the inscription, "Mr. Hartridge"; and through the doorway
protruded the rather foxy countenance of Inspector Badger.
"I am glad you have come, sir," said he, as he recognized my colleague.
"Mr. Marchmont is sitting inside like a watch-dog, and he growls if any
of us even walks across the room."
The words formed a complaint, but there was a certain geniality in the
speaker's manner which made me suspect that Inspector Badger was already
navigating his craft on a lee shore.
We entered a small lobby or hall, and from thence passed into the
sitting-room, where we found Mr. Marchmont keeping his vigil, in company
with a constable and a uniformed inspector. The three rose softly as we
entered, and greeted us in a whisper; and then, with one accord, we all
looked towards the other end of the room, and so remained for a time
without speaking.
There was, in the entire aspect of the room, something very grim and
dreadful. An atmosphere of tragic mystery enveloped the most commonplace
objects; and sinister suggestions lurked in the most familiar
appearances. Especially impressive was the air of suspense--of ordinary,
every-day life suddenly arrested--cut short in the twinkling of an eye.
The electric lamps, still burning dim and red, though the summer
sunshine streamed in through the windows; the half-emptied tumbler and
open book by the empty chair, had each its whispered message of swift
and sudden disaster, as had the hushed voices and stealthy movements of
the waiting men, and, above all, an awesome shape that was but a few
hours since a living man, and that now sprawled, prone and motionless,
on the floor.
"This is a mysterious affair," observed Inspector Badger, breaking the
silence at length, "though it is clear enough up to a certain point. The
body tells its own story."
We stepped across and looked down at the corpse. It was that of a
somewhat elderly man, and lay, on an open space of floor before the
fireplace, face downwards, with the arms extended. The slender hilt of a
dagger projected from the back below the left shoulder, and, with the
exception of a trace of blood upon the lips, this was the only
indication of the mode of death. A little way from the body a clock-key
lay on the carpet, and, glancing up at the clock on the mantelpiece, I
perceived that the glass front was open.
"You see," pursued the inspector, noting my glance, "he was standing in
front of the fireplace, winding the clock. Then the murderer stole up
behind him--the noise of the turning key must have covered his
movements--and stabbed him. And you see, from the position of the dagger
on the left side of the back, that the murderer must have been
left-handed. That is all clear enough. What is not clear is how he got
in, and how he got out again."
"The body has not been moved, I suppose," said Thorndyke.
"No. We sent for Dr. Egerton, the police-surgeon, and he certified that
the man was dead. He will be back presently to see you and arrange about
the post-mortem."
"Then," said Thorndyke, "we will not disturb the body till he comes,
except to take the temperature and dust the dagger-hilt."
He took from his bag a long, registering chemical thermometer and an
insufflator or powder-blower. The former he introduced under the dead
man's clothing against the abdomen, and with the latter blew a stream of
fine yellow powder on to the black leather handle of the dagger.
Inspector Badger stooped eagerly to examine the handle, as Thorndyke
blew away the powder that had settled evenly on the surface.
"No finger-prints," said he, in a disappointed tone. "He must have worn
gloves. But that inscription gives a pretty broad hint."
He pointed, as he spoke, to the metal guard of the dagger, on which was
engraved, in clumsy lettering, the single word, "TRADITORE."
"That's the Italian for 'traitor,'" continued the inspector, "and I got
some information from the porter that fits in with that suggestion.
We'll have him in presently, and you shall hear."
"Meanwhile," said Thorndyke, "as the position of the body may be of
importance in the inquiry, I will take one or two photographs and make a
rough plan to scale. Nothing has been moved, you say? Who opened the
windows?"
"They were open when we came in," said Mr. Marchmont. "Last night was
very hot, you remember. Nothing whatever has been moved."
Thorndyke produced from his bag a small folding camera, a telescopic
tripod, a surveyor's measuring-tape, a boxwood scale, and a
sketch-block. He set up the camera in a corner, and exposed a plate,
taking a general view of the room, and including the corpse. Then he
moved to the door and made a second exposure.
"Will you stand in front of the clock, Jervis," he said, "and raise
your hand as if winding it? Thanks; keep like that while I expose a
plate."
I remained thus, in the position that the dead man was assumed to have
occupied at the moment of the murder, while the plate was exposed, and
then, before I moved, Thorndyke marked the position of my feet with a
blackboard chalk. He next set up the tripod over the chalk marks, and
took two photographs from that position, and finally photographed the
body itself.
The photographic operations being concluded, he next proceeded, with
remarkable skill and rapidity, to lay out on the sketch-block a
ground-plan of the room, showing the exact position of the various
objects, on a scale of a quarter of an inch to the foot--a process that
the inspector was inclined to view with some impatience.
"You don't spare trouble, Doctor," he remarked; "nor time either," he
added, with a significant glance at his watch.
"No," answered Thorndyke, as he detached the finished sketch from the
block; "I try to collect all the facts that may bear on a case. They may
prove worthless, or they may turn out of vital importance; one never
knows beforehand, so I collect them all. But here, I think, is Dr.
Egerton."
The police-surgeon greeted Thorndyke with respectful cordiality, and we
proceeded at once to the examination of the body. Drawing out the
thermometer, my colleague noted the reading, and passed the instrument
to Dr. Egerton.
"Dead about ten hours," remarked the latter, after a glance at it. "This
was a very determined and mysterious murder."
"Very," said Thorndyke. "Feel that dagger, Jervis."